| # | University | City | World rank | In-country | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trinity College Dublin | Dublin | #75 (2026) | #1 | 8,104,272 |
| 2 | University College Dublin | #118 (2026) | #3 | 7,061,468 | |
| 3 | Queen's University Belfast | Belfast | #199 (2026) | #25 | 6,935,581 |
| 4 | University College Cork | Cork | #246 (2026) | #4 | 4,716,214 |
| 5 | University of Galway | #273 (2025) | #5 | 3,126,283 | |
| 6 | University of Limerick | #401 (2026) | #6 | 1,557,976 | |
| 7 | Dublin City University | #410 (2026) | #7 | 1,547,045 | |
| 8 | Technological University Dublin | not ranked | #10 | 222,286 | |
| 9 | Galway Mayo Institute of Technology | not ranked | #12 | 81,811 | |
| 10 | Dundalk Institute of Technology | Dundalk | not ranked | #13 | 55,947 |
| 11 | National College of Ireland | Dublin | not ranked | #14 | 36,575 |
| 12 | Royal College of Physicians of Ireland | not ranked | #15 | 8,852 | |
| 13 | Griffith College | not ranked | — | 780 | |
| 14 | National University of Ireland | not ranked | #8 | 1,023,445 | |
| 15 | National University of Ireland, Maynooth | not ranked | #9 | 822,798 | |
| 16 | Athlone Institute of Technology | not ranked | #11 | 84,587 | |
| 17 | Atlantic Technological University | not ranked | — | 29,198 |
What the two columns mean
In-country is the position the ranking record gives the university among those in its own country, and it is often the more useful number: a university ranked 480th in the world may still be third at home. It is carried over as published, so it does not always follow the order of the other two columns. World rank is the university's QS World University Rankings position. Citations are the number of times work published by the university has been cited, as recorded in OpenAlex; it is the measure used to order universities that QS does not rank at all.
The two do not always agree. A large research university can out-cite a smaller one that sits above it in QS, because QS weighs reputation surveys and staff ratios as well as research.